In the past, a patient (or customer) wishing to order a new prescription medication visited a pharmacy to drop off the paper prescription in person. In some instances, a patient could request a new prescription medication by mail, by phone or by facsimile, which would require the pharmacy staff to call the prescriber to confirm or initiate a legal prescription.
In any event, the systems currently in place require a patient who wishes to order a new paper prescription to call, visit, mail or send a facsimile to the pharmacy, all of which can be very time consuming processes. In many instances, a customer must drop the new paper prescription off at the pharmacy and wait 20-30 minutes before the corresponding prescription medication is ready. In addition, many pharmacists are required to examine a new paper prescription to determine whether the new paper prescription is fraudulent because, for example, the prescribing physician's signature was forged, the prescriber is not a licensed physician, etc. Besides for the additional amount of time this takes, pharmacists also may make errors in judgment and fill some fraudulent prescriptions while refusing to fill other legitimate prescriptions.